MentalHealthDaily

Opioid Coalitions Used Data and Shared Goals to Expand MOUD/Naloxone

by GLOOM

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A 2026 qualitative case study of 8 top-performing HEALing Communities Study communities linked opioid-response implementation success to representative coalition membership, shared goals, data connectivity, and communications campaigns, not to a simple urban-vs.-rural split.1 The useful lesson is operational: coalitions worked when collaboration was turned into service reach for medication for opioid use disorder and overdose …

ED Naloxone Need: 3.87M At-Risk Visits vs. 226K Overdoses

by GLOOM

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A 2026 emergency department claims analysis estimated 3.87 million United States ED visits in 2021 where take-home naloxone could have been clinically relevant, compared with 226,453 ED-treated opioid-overdose visits in the same database.1 The finding reframes naloxone distribution as an emergency-care workflow for overdose risk, polysubstance exposure, long-term opioid use, and patients who arrive after …

Substance Use Disorder Brain Connectivity in 53 Studies

by GLOOM

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A 53-study resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) meta-analysis found substance use disorder (SUD) linked to altered connectivity across prefrontal, striatal, thalamic, cingulate, and amygdala circuits. The most clinically relevant finding was an impulsivity correlation, not a diagnostic brain signature. Research Highlights Meta-analysis scale was meaningful: Zhang et al. pooled 53 whole-brain resting-state functional magnetic …

fMRI Low-Frequency Oscillation Tracked Nicotine Dependence and Arousal

by GLOOM

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A 2026 multi-cohort fMRI study found that a signal often treated as physiological noise tracked nicotine dependence, cue-induced craving, abstinence, and stimulant effects.1 During cigarette cue exposure, systemic low-frequency oscillation amplitude correlated with nicotine dependence at r = −0.32, p = .009. Research Highlights Dependence tracked cue-period physiology: In 64 smokers, higher average sLFO amplitude …

Alcohol vs. Cannabis Cues: People Miss Marijuana Signs

by GLOOM

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A 2026 survey of 467 University of Sydney undergraduate psychology students found that participants generated more and more accurate observable cues for alcohol intoxication than for cannabis intoxication.1 When unanswered cue fields were counted, accurate alcohol cues appeared in 63.2% of possible response slots, while accurate cannabis cues appeared in 37.3%. Research Highlights Alcohol cues …

MDD and Alcohol Use Disorder Polygenic Scores Add 4.88% Prediction

by GLOOM

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A 2026 Add Health analysis found that combining major-depression and alcohol-use-disorder polygenic scores added 4.88% variance for comorbid MDD-AUD prediction, while same-trait scores added only 0.65% for MDD and 1.52% for AUD alone.1 The genetic signal is strongest where the clinical problem is hardest: depression plus alcohol-use disorder, not either diagnosis in isolation. Research Highlights …

Cocaine-Alcohol Relapse Shifts Prelimbic-Accumbens Circuit

by GLOOM

Cocaine relapse circuitry looks different when alcohol is part of the history. In a rat model, inhibiting prelimbic cortex neurons projecting to the nucleus accumbens core blocked cue-triggered cocaine seeking after cocaine alone, but failed after sequential cocaine-alcohol polysubstance use.1 Research Highlights PL-NAc inhibition split by drug history: in a 4-group DREADD experiment, inhibiting the …